PeteSpencer wrote:..
So I don’t understand the battle to bring these failing languages back ( Welsh , Irish Gaelic etc) when they only impact a tiny and shrinking number of people.
Latin, for example , has served its purpose in a big and special way, but there’s no campaign to bring it back into widespread use.
For Welsh, at least, I'd dispute 'failing' and 'shrinking'. It's the non-English language whose online courses by ISTR two major providers have been most subscribed by new UK-based learners during the last lockdown year.
[And I'd personally welcome a widespread reintroduction of Latin into the school curriculum, as early as possible, as an excellent gateway for native anglophones to the ideas of grammar and prosody and so to other modern languages; this is because modern spoken and colloquially written English is so imprecise and inconsistent in both, making the required discipline of both in many other languages difficult to grasp for the new learner if they are not encountered until Secondary age. But I realise that I may be in a minority, and I am not 'campaigning' on the subject
]
(mere guide at) Jet Age Museum, Gloucestershire Airport
http://www.jetagemuseum.org/TripAdvisor Excellence Award 2015
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction ... gland.html